A Record Store Joke
"What do you call a CD
that retails for more than $9.99?
Answer: A return.
"…Our
customers have spoken loud and clear. They love their CDs and they love
purchasing them from indie record stores. The only problem we're
currently facing, and will continue to face in the future, is the
current price point…we've inherited the $9.99 price
point from the non-traditional retailers, from the loss-leader
shenanigans of the big boxes to the digital smoke and mirrors offered
up online."
– Eric Levin of The Alliance Of Independent Media Stores
AIMS debut sales for November 17th, 2009
Artist Title (Label)
- RAWLINGS,DAVE MACHINE Friend Of A Friend (Acony Records)
- THEM CROOKED VULTURES Them Crooked Vultures (Interscope)
- MAYER,JOHN Battle Studies (Columbia)
- ALL TIME LOW Nothing Personal (Hopeless)
- JONES,NORAH Fall (Blue Note)
- 50 CENT Before I Self-Destruct (Aftermat)
- FELT Felt3: A Tribute To Rosie Pere (Rhymesayers Ent)
- JACKSON,JANET #1's (A&M)
- LEWIS,LEONA (Echo J)
- MCCARTNEY,PAUL Good Evening NYC (Concord)
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lol, Im going to use that one lol.
I can’t think of another business where units sold would decline by 50%, and yet pricing would be expected to hold firm.
I’m an outsider, not in the biz, but I think the AIMS guys are in for a shock after the holiday season. The remaining chain brick&mortar retailers should ratchet down sales space again, and (I speculate) this should push the majors to stop physical manufacturing on a lot of titles. Can the AIMS guys survive on boutique labels and used sales?
A ten song CD downloaded @ .99 per song is $9.99. The physical CD @ $9.99 is still a good deal. It’s good for impulse sales.
The actual sale of a cd at $9.99 is a good thing, all cd’s should be this price, and as far as online, the price is too high, there is no need for space, once the song is uploaded to digital format, that is it, whether it sale 1 million times or 1 time, it cost nothing to upload a song on a site, music (business) needs to change its thinking
Maybe they should try the old bootleg price of 5 dollars for a few months and see what happens either they will make some money or atleast clear out some old albums taking up space in a warehouse somewhere.